Sleep Deprivation

I'm really amazed at my ability to lie to myself. I blew off movie night with a group of friends, having convinced myself that I really needed to come home and just crash out. I missed out on Killer Klowns from Outer Space and some great homemade spaghetti, only to sit around in my apartment quite conscious. Truth be told, it probably was a good idea to skip out – I'm running on four hours sleep. Still, I shouldda been able to see past my own crafty plot.

All weekend my schedule was just screwed up. It was the boozing up that did it, I imagine. Sunday night was spent staring at that little popcorn crap on my ceiling until about 4:30 am. Tonight was going to be the night I smacked my body back into its normal rhythm. Not so much, no.

Why is it so hard to TRY to sleep? I'm really good at it normally, probably have myself a medal if it was some sort of Olympic event. I'm not saying that I'm getting the Gold and my own personal box of Wheaties. Maybe one of them gold stars?

So what do you do about it? If you're me, not a whole lot. I wandered around aimlessly online for a while, picked up and tried to start about four different books, shuffled madly through my iTunes library and pondered about things.

[rant]
I'm convinced there's two middle aged guys sitting in an apartment somewhere in the Midwest responsible for all the spam blogs I keep finding. One of them is named Bob. Bob and his pal sit for ten hours everyday in a dark little room launching spam blog after spam blog, trying to sell timeshare, discount cellular phones and car insurance. One of these days a group of us are going to find out which basement you folks call home… Stop clogging up my damned internet!
[/rant]

Pardon me for that. I feel a little better now.

I came up with a couple of questions/musings during my last few nights as an insomniac. In no particular order:

- I've come to the conclusion that "normal" is a pretty stupid label to apply to people. This epiphany came at around 5:20 am of night two of sleeplessness, as I started to compare myself against my fellow bloggers. How's my life doing in the grand scheme, I wondered. A random voyeuristic peek into a handful of other lives and I'm starting to see how it's like on the other side. You're odd folk, people, but I imagine there are many more outside of this medium just as quirky. "Normal" applies to how my car's running or the current weather trend.

- Where does creativity come from? This neuron fired after I saw some pretty nifty looking blogs out there, and starting planning some similar tweaks to this page. I'm a graphic artist, a creative professional, so I figure I ought to be able to conjure up something nice to represent my online ramblings. I sat around for about an hour, flipping through my design annuals and my (literal) shoebox of ideas and nothing. Nada.

I know creativity is an ongoing process, but why does it seem like many of my peers walk around with their own personal muse? Where do I draw my inspiration from? I'm not even certain that I can describe my own personal style at the moment. It's been weeks. Graphic design relies on communication, on grabbing someone's attention for as long as you can. It's about shaping an idea into something else and for that you need to be inspired.

I realize everyone in the field has these spurts. The analytical side of my brain is reassuring me that it's something that'll pass. For now, though, I'm afraid that my creativity ran off to the same place my ability to sleep went. Once they both decide to return I'll try to spiff up the locale a little.